Gail Alexan­der

The Op­po­si­tion PNM goes on re­treat to over­haul sys­tems next month, says PNM chief whip Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald, who dis­agrees with fel­low MP Colm Im­bert's claim that some­thing is "very, very wrong" in the par­ty.

Im­bert made the claim on Wednes­day, say­ing the PNM "must wake up and smell the cof­fee," af­ter Mon­day's lo­cal goven­ment elec­tion de­feat. He de­nied ac­cu­sa­tions by some PN­Mites that the ab­sence of him­self and fel­low Diego MP Amery Browne from the cam­paign con­tributed to the PNM's loss of the Diego Mar­tin cor­po­ra­tion. Both were in Eu­rope dur­ing the cam­paign. Yes­ter­day, chief whip Mc­Don­ald said: "I would have to dis­agree with Mr Im­bert. I don't know if some­thing is 'very, very wrong'...It sim­ply takes some peo­ple longer to ad­just to Op­po­si­tion than oth­ers," she said. "Suf­fice to say the PNM knows it has to un­der­take in­tro­spec­tion and we in­tend to do this im­me­di­ate­ly.

"We dis­cussed it at Tues­day's cau­cus and we will be em­bark­ing on a re­treat in Au­gust when the Par­lia­ment is on re­cess. So, rest as­sured we will be tak­ing stock." Mc­Don­ald said nei­ther Im­bert nor Browne no­ti­fied her or PNM leader Kei­th Row­ley of their ab­sence from the coun­try dur­ing the cam­paign. "The first we knew was when it was an­nounced in the Par­lia­ment and it shocked us all...Even Dr Row­ley was sur­prised," Mc­Don­ald added. She said she had tried to con­tact Im­bert sev­er­al times by phone and text mes­sage and was told he was in Italy. Browne had said on Wednes­day that mem­bers were told of his trip. Yes­ter­day, Im­bert said that at the end of the Ju­ly 2 Par­lia­ment sit­ting, he had told Mc­Don­ald he would be away. He said he of­fered to give her his sub­mis­sion notes for the up­com­ing de­bate on the pro­cure­ment pol­i­cy bill ,for which he would have been ab­sent.

Im­bert said: "She thanked me for the notes. I al­so called her on Ju­ly 3 at home, re­mind­ed her of our con­ver­sa­tion and asked if she re­quired any more ma­te­r­i­al for the pol­i­cy de­bate. She again thanked me and told me to en­joy my trip." He said Mc­Don­ald al­so con­tact­ed him around Ju­ly 4 when he was abroad and asked if he was re­turn­ing to de­bate the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion ap­point­ment. He said he was re­turn­ing on Ju­ly 24. She again con­tact­ed him twice in the fol­low­ing weeks, he added. Im­bert claimed Mc­Don­ald seemed to have for­got­ten his ear­li­er con­ver­sa­tion with her. "It's not my fault if she did...We all have mem­o­ry laps­es," he added.

He said that when he was House leader, four non-min­is­te­r­i­al MPs–Row­ley, Pen­ny Beck­les, In­dra Sinanan Ojah Ma­haraj and An­tho­ny Roberts–did not usu­al­ly seek the leader's per­mis­sion to be away from T&T. "There were oc­ca­sions when MPs left T&T with­out in­form­ing me and I had dif­fi­cul­ty be­ing short on votes for bills," Im­bert said. "I can say with­out fear of con­tra­di­tion that af­ter Dr Row­ley was dis­missed from the then Gov­ern­ment, I nev­er re­ceived any cor­re­spon­dence re­gard­ing his ab­sence." Since it had nev­er been the prac­tice of Op­po­si­tion MPs or back­benchers to in­form the leader of ab­sence, he said he didn't in­form Row­ley. Im­bert, how­ev­er, said he in­formed Mc­Don­ald.